


All the Difference

by sunANDdust



Category: Alien: Covenant, Prometheus (2012)
Genre: Android-Human relationship, David wants to be a father, F/M, Fluff but actually dark, Love, Madness, Set between Prometheus and Alien: Covenant, Tags May Change, You Have Been Warned, and not, like really
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-24
Updated: 2017-05-24
Packaged: 2018-11-04 14:28:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,009
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10992825
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunANDdust/pseuds/sunANDdust
Summary: Her hair looked frizzy and dry, her face with high round cheeks and small, narrowed eyes.It was devastatingly mediocre. He grinned at the drawing.Looking up, he turned the paper towards her in order to catch her attention.Elizabeth's eyebrows rose for a second when she noticed what he had produced, then a carefree smile broke loose, crinkling her eyes as she took in the drawing and him holding it proudly with a broad grin.-Inspired by a deleted scene from the new film/I'm bad at tagging and summaries/Takes place between "Prometheus" and "Alien: Covenant"...kind of





	All the Difference

It started with a drawing. The time after her putting him back together was unsure and awkward at best. But the longer they were forced to work together, the more often he woke her up at night when she screamed, caught up in a nightmare, the awkwardness slowly faded.

He had never felt so much before, how could human beings ever bear the sheer onslaught of emotions mixed up with each other?  
He sat with her when she ate, sometimes when she slept. Although Elizabeth did not like the latter, she said it was creepy so he did it secretely. And slowly her smile returned. It was exhiliarating to be the object of her focus, the receiver of such a smile. Now, the tension flooded from her shoulders when they worked together on maps and charts, and he caught her from time to time watching him from under her lashes as if she tried to figure out a tricky mathematical problem. Anyway, he did not mention it to her and kept on working, scratching absentmindedly the seam of where she'd put his head back onto his body.

One day, when they were trying out the control pannels of the Engineers' vessel with Elizabeth in the navigator's seat, she looked so happy, so excited and scared at the same time that he could almost accept that there was a God who had let her live. Let her live to be with him, David.  
“We will leave this wretched place” she said, “we will finally make it, David.”  
That day, he created the drawing of her. They sat around a table on the bridge, Elizabeth sipping on some hot baverage while working, as he was trying his best to commit all that she was on paper. Of course he could have done a marvellous job, replicate her sharp cheekbones and slightly crooked nose as perfect as her wavy long hair and serious eyes. She would be a living, breathing thing on paper, on a level with DaVinci's _Lisa_ or Botticelli's _Venus_. But for the first time, he did not push himself to strive for perfection. For a mere second he closed his eyes and opened them again, keeping his first, slightly blurred sight of her in mind as his hand flew across the paper. Her hair looked frizzy and dry, her face with high round cheeks and small, narrowed eyes.  
It was devastatingly mediocre. He grinned at the drawing.  
Looking up, he turned the paper towards her in order to catch her attention.  
Elizabeth's eyebrows rose for a second when she noticed what he had produced, then a carefree smile broke loose, crinkling her eyes as she took in the drawing and him holding it proudly with a broad grin.

When she ate her dinner and he sat across from her, trying not to stare too inhumanly at her, she suddenly opened her mouth, still half-ful with a bite of her meal and started telling him an anecdote from her childhood. About a pipe and the almost burning down of a straw roof.  
“My friend Koda and I, we had stolen my father's pipe. He avoided alcohol but God, he loved a good smoke.” Her smile was only the slightest bit sad but David decided to ignore it that one time. “We hid ourselves in the pantry, lit it up and, well, we were not quite sure what to do with it. We were so little back then.” She chuckled, eating another spoonful and he gave up trying not to stare.  
“What happened?” he asked, entranced by the idea of the little girl he had seen in her dreams so often getting into trouble for a silly escapade. She looked back at him and smiled. “I started to blow into it like a trumped and we laughed and did not notice the sparks rising up to the roof until it was too late and there was smoke up in the air smelling of burned straw. That was when Koda ran for her mother, my father's friend and our housekeeper, who was able to put it out after a while. But of course my father was furious. I had never seen him that angry before and I was scared.” Her smile broadened. “Koda's mother – I cannot remember her name – remained quite relaxed. After my father was done raging, she said very dryly: 'Well, at least you now have an excuse to buy yourself a new pipe.' and then handed him two pieces of wood, the remains of the pipe he had thrown to the floor and stepped on in his anger.”  
She threw her head back and laughed, loud and happy and he had never heard her laugh like that before.  
He smirked, then forced his expression back into seriousness. “And imagine, something far, far worse could have happened. Unthinkable that it might have come to that.”  
She looked back at him in expectation, taking a sip from her glass.  
“You could have actually smoked the damn thing.”  
With a snort Elizabeth slapped her hand over her mouth, her drink shooting from ther nose and the corners of her mouth with violent laughter. This time, David laughed with her, for her and a littlebit at her and it was something he would always remember: her laughter and his, together.  
They did not talk much longer after that since it was getting late. But when she got up from the table to go to bed, she stopped by his side looking down at him, before bending down to his sitting frame and kissed the top of his head.  
Then with a smile she said: “Good night, David.” and left the room.  
He remained sitting in his spot for a great while longer and could not help but feeling blessed in some way.

After one of her nightmares he simply remained in her makeshift bed with her, hugging her against his chest. She did not send him away but she did not press herself closer to him either. That was three days after the 'Anecdote Evening'. Actually, she did not react much at all, however, fell back asleep much quicker than before.  
The next night she asked him to share her bed – in a platonic sense of course – because it made her feel safer. Elizabeth blushed when saying so and he wondered if she was embarrassed by needing an android, like a man-sized plushie, to sleep better. He simply smiled at her and 'of course he would share her bed'. He enjoyed the sound of those words.  
Anyway, he held her that night and nothing more.

The next night, he kissed her. A mere press of lips to her lips and she stared at him wide-eyed but did not comment on it. In her sleep she pulled his arm around her waist and when she awoke the next time after approximatley eight hours of undisturbed sleep, he felt as if he'd dreamed away the night. Pathetic, androids did not dream. That's what Weyland had said but where had his opinions and complexes taken him? To despair and death. David smiled to himself when Elizabeth began so stir in her sleep. He had become a dreamer, obviously.

The first time he pushed himself into her he was overwhelmed and almost scared of the sensations assaulting his nervous system. He felt just so much, almost pulling back but her arms sneaked closer around his torso and held him to her.  
“It's alright.” she breathed, something like awe in her voice.  
He gulped around the lump in his throat, ordering his shaking arms to keep his body from crushing her under his weight, to keep himself from-  
“Elizabeth, I-”  
“I've got you, David.” She kissed his face, scratching her nails softly over his scalp and the shock of sensation ran right down into his loins. “I've got you.”  
She looked at him like he was a man. There was no contemplating the differences and similarities, no search for humanity in his eyes. In her eyes, he simply was a man.

He knew that he loved her. Well, he'd known before but somehow he'd not realized it as what it was before she had pulled him down on top of her. From then on, she never send him away or scolded him for staring at her while she was asleep. No, she would wake up with a smile and fall asleep with a smile.  
Sometimes he lay awake, battling the confusion and joy and fear and irritation directed at her for tricking him into this. For she had tricked him into feeling human with all its fantastic facets and creeping horrors and it had been spectacular.

The sound of Elizabeth retching made him snap out of 'sleep'. Of course he did not sleep but his nights had started to be filled with him staring into space and dreaming with open eyes. It was at least something.  
Hearing the sound again, he jumped up from the bed on the floor, naked as he was, and pushed the door to the bathing facilities open. Elizabeth crouched on the floor, throwing up into one of the toilets.  
In the past he would have crouched down next to her, asking her if she was alright and if he could do something for her, but now he knew that it was the last thing she would want to hear. Therefore, he simply turned around and got a glass of water, quietly handing it to her when she had calmed her stomach. Elizabeth took it with a nod, sweat glistening on her face.  
“I think there was something wrong with my dinner yesterday.” she groaned and let her head fall back against the wall. And there they were, sitting on the floor of a bathroom, naked and with nothing to say. It was not awkward, somehow, and suddenly Elizabeth chuckled.  
“Stupid human body.”  
“Don't say that.” he said, brows drawn together before rising to his feet and helping her up as well. “Let's get you back to bed.”

He was reading a chart and ran some calculations when she suddenly appeared in the doorway, leaning against it with her arms crossed in front of her chest.  
“I did not get my period last month.”  
David looked up. With the food not a hundred percent suitable for humans and considering the lack of fresh air and daylight it was not unusual for a woman to not get her period. The effect was hightened by spending a long time in cryosleep.  
She frowned, the muscles in her chin tightening.  
“And this month?” he asked for the sake of breaking the silence. He was not completely sure of what to make of this conversation.  
“I did not get my period either.”  
They went up to the medcentre to run some checks on her but all the results were alright or at least unalarming. When he ordered the machine to do a full body scan, however, David felt as if he was caught up in a deja-vu.  
“Oh my” he breathed, “you're pregnant.”  
When he turned around to look at her, Elizabeth stared back at him as if she was contemplating the chances of him playing an evil prank on her or waking up in a nightmare she'd had before.  
He turned the screen around so she could se the scan and she gasped.  
Frowning, David let his eyes switch from her to the screen and back again.  
“When was the last time you bled?” he asked and this time he did not fear embarrassing her with his question. She did not look embarrassed either. Elizabeth looked rather horrified.  
“I cannot remember.” she breathed. “How is this even possible, I mean...I always thought you – I mean, you cannot-”  
“I was created sterile.” he saved her from her stammering, sitting down onto the cot next to her. He noticed how she scooted over a little to make room for him. Her eyes were big but not wet.  
David hesitated for a second, then asked: “What do you want to do?”  
She wiped her face with her hands, looked tired and spend all of a sudden. “I want to sleep.”  
So he took her to bed and she clung to him. She slept for seven hours and when she awoke he kissesd her and she was wet and he had never initiated sex before but that time he did and felt only slightly guilty about it.  
Elizabeth smiled at him, panting.  
“I wanted to distract you.” he admitted.  
“Well, distracting me you did.”  
She tickled his stomach and he flinched, making a sound he was less than proud of. She laughed and straddled him. The next time she woke up, Elizabeth was hungry.

“Life finds a way.” she mused aloud, lying on her back with her belly protruding like a hill from a valley. David was lying on his side, facing her.  
“Amen.” he whispered, grinning at her rolling her eyes.  
She had been eight months pregnant at the time and David fell from one extreme mood into another as his inner mechanism rattled and ran to process what had happened. A sterile man and a sterile woman creating a child, a red error sign arose in his mind when thinking about it.  
David pushed his ear against her belly and listened. He continued to listen even after Elizabthe had fallen asleep.  
“I love you.” he said, to her, to the child, he was not sure.

He said 'I love you' again the day Elizabeth woke up with wetness soaking the bed and pain seemingly ripping her innards apart. They had prepared the medcentre weeks before as good as possible. David did not hold her hand during the worst contractions and he did not try to calm her with sentences such as 'it's going to be alright' or 'you are doing great' since, honestly, neither of them had any idea what they were doing. Of course he had a basic medical knowledge of childbirth, needed to be prepared for every possible scenario out there, but he was no doctor.  
Elizabeth did not scream, she did not search him with her eyes pleading for support but seemed gone to another sphere where only her body, her pain and her mind existed. She clearly acknowledged his commands to press, to relax to whatever but she remained far away. Therefore, David felt as if he was all alone with his child when the tiny body slipped into his waiting hands after a final contraction. Alone, but not lonely, not left behind. He held the bundle of flesh, staring at it and felt panic rise in his stomach. Then it cried, the bundle cried and suddenly wetness slipped down his cheeks and he was lost, completely and utterly lost. He shivered all over when he lay his son onto his mother's chest.  
Elizabeth looked at him, pale and sweaty and so exhausted it was a miracle she even had the strength to speak when she said: “I thought you were going to suffocate.”  
He exhaled shakily, brushing hair from her forehead. “I thought so, too.”  
Then he stared down at his tiny crying son and the mother wrapping him into a bloody cloth to cradle him carefully.  
David could not speak but in his mind he said the words. And this time he knew for sure to whom he'd said them.

Throughout the months, Elizabeth joked more than once that this was probably the easiest parenting a mother had ever done since David was always awake and ready to take care of little Adam during the night. At some point she said that if it was not for her to breastfeed the child she would not get to hold her son at all. It was supposed to be a joke but tinged with a slight taste of bitterness.  
He felt guilty for holding his son so often and not holding her at all, he really was, but David could not help himself. This was his son, made of flesh and blood and very human like his mother.  
They did not sleep with each other for eight months, hardly shared any tenderness until one night they pounced on each other as if an invisible line had been crossed and an emergency shutdown had taken place in both of their brains.  
“I love you.” she said and he realised that it was the first time she'd said it aloud.

The next morning they reprogrammed their route, locating a planet rather nearby that was inhabitable for humans. They argued, they yelled at each other, their experiences with seemingly harmless planets too corrupted to make this easy. Adam interrupted them with a loud wail and for the first time David looked tired. Not phsyically but there was something in his eyes that made Elizabeth set him down into a chair and went to get their son.  
“Adaaaam” she sing-sang when walking back into the room, bouncing the infant on her hip, “look who's been all grumpy with your mother about things he knows she is perfectly right about.”  
David could not help but smile about the humour shining in her eyes, the tension resolved for now. As soon as Adam made him out sitting on the chair, he began to struggle and reached his chubby arms out to father, smiling broader than the stupidly smiling rhinoceros Elizabeth had cobbled together out of old rags. And Adam loved this stupid plushie.  
David looked at Elizabeth and he felt as if seeing her for the first time in months. And suddenly she was no longer simply the woman nursing his son, the woman he 'slept' next to at night nor the woman he had argued with a few moments before. She was Elizabeth who had been so different, so kind and who had whispered to him 'I've got you, David.'  
He cried and she held him. “I am sorry.” he sobbed. “I don't know what happened.”  
She did not say a word but made him hold his son and let him cry.

The two suns in the sky shone brightly, it was about noon and David wondered if he should put some sunscreen on Adam who was running all over the place as quickly as possible. The boy stumbled and fell, disappearing momentarily among the high red grass.  
David walked over and pulled him up by his legs, making the child squeal in delight.  
“Why are you hanging upside down, young man?” David said with played astonishment and cocked his head.  
“Dada!”  
David smiled when hearing the word, the first word Adam had spoken two months ago. “Yes, I'm Dada and who is this?” Elizabeth sat at the garden table, deep in thoughts while reading with countless papers all around her. David carried his laughing son over to the table and stopped right in front of her, letting the boy dangle there until Elizabeth noticed. And when she did, she cocked her head and grinned. “Are you a bat?”  
“Maaaaaa!”  
David laughed and Elizabeth sighed. Adam would not stop calling her 'Ma' no matter ho often they said 'Mommy'. She shook her head, smiling, looking at her son and David noticed the healthy colour of her skin, the shine in her eyes as she watched them. He enjoyed the silence on their planet, the silence of the house, especially since her swollen belly kept Elizabeth from getting up very early and rummaging around the house as she'd used to.  
He sat the infant down but not before pressing a kiss to his head. “Don't run off too far, I am watching you.” he said and knew perfectly well that Adam was still to young to understand every word he said, however, he still felt compelled to say them. Of course, the little one ran off immediately, disappearing into the huge sea of red grass.  
David closed his eyes, enjoying the sound of the wind, the rustling of paper while Elizabeth read and turned pages. Her hand touched his.  
“David.”  
He opened his eyes.

“David...”  
He pulled himself from his daydreaming and looked over to where she lay, where he had kept her since the beginning of his experiment. He rose from his chair, his pen clattering to the floor but he did not care. He looked down at her face, her beautiful, transformed, pale face.  
“Yes, my love?”  
Her breath left her throat with a dry wheezing sound, arms twitching. He did not need to restrain her anymore since the youngest changes about her had started. She was no longer able to stand up by herself.  
Something wet slid down her cheek and hissed on the newly evolved skin around her head. The membrane was way to sensitive to his liking if a mild concentration as her tears could harm it. He would need to fix that later.  
Her hand grabbed David's arm unexpectedly, her eyes, transformed as they were, shining with horror and confusion. “David, please...”  
David felt pain flare up in his guts. “I try, my love. I don't know what could work, I tried everything. You know I did.”  
A dry sob shook her. She wheezed again, something that sounded like a repetition of his name. He took her hand from his arm and kissed it, embracing it with his. “I will try harder my dear, I promise. But you have to stay patient. Please, please, try to be patient.” With this he leaned down, pressing a kiss to her lips and felt desire flare in his loins. But no, he would restrain himself. She needed to be perfectly undisturbed and clean from anything his body might ooze. Pointless, soulless liquid that pulsed in his veins. More than once he had ripped his arms open, striving to splatter that worthless imitation of blood. More than once he had had his 'seed' on his fingers, hating it's uselessness with all fibres of his being. For he could not give his love what she wanted: a child.  
No, he would try harder.  
From the nearby table he took the syringe he had prepared and injected the sedative into her bloodstream. Elizabeth did not even flinch, simply watched him with her strange eyes. His proud, strong Elizabeth.  
“Sleep.” he whispered and she did.  
David returned to the desk he'd been working on. Looking down at the drawings laid out across its space. Manifestations of his love kept on paper, er first miscarriage, her second, her third. He clenched his teeth and tried not to scream. Everything was closing in on him, the walls, the glance in Elizabeth eyes from before. He reached for the only thing that could calm him down.  
On the wall, there were two framed pictures, drawings actually, the only ones he had honoured in such a manner. The smaller one showed a human child, dark-haired and blue-eyed. He reached his hand towards the paper and touched it. The child smiled.  
“Adam.” he exhaled, feeling the sharp yearning again in his gut and only knew to calm it by breaking his fist against the wall. The shattered fingers healed, more slowly than they used to in the past, but they healed. Stone crumbled to the floor but the wall did not collaps. He needed to be more careful.  
David's eyes settled on the other one, the other drawing and he felt hopeless and alone, like a failure. She was right there and he had failed her, failed her will. It was a drawing of Elizabeth showing her in profile. His android senses leveled it as ugly but he knew better.  
Her hair looked frizzy and dry, her face with high round cheeks and small, narrowed eyes.  
He grinned, a grimace, and returned to his work, feeling the slightest bit restored in his endeavour to make it work. Carefully, he listened for any noise from the other room. She surely slept deeply this time, better not to wake her, he thought.  
David took his pen, the coal and started drawing. It all had started with a drawing.

**Author's Note:**

> This was the only thing I could think of after watching "Covenant". I had to write it.
> 
> I own the story, nothing else.


End file.
